Mr. Shakes and I have many things in common, but our talent at locating things is not one of them. I'm the kind of person who remembers where I saw that little piece of paper with the number to that place that fixes the things that so-and-so recommended to us six months ago; at any given moment, I can tell him that this is in the second drawer of the kitchen and that is sitting on the work table on the far side of the garage and his shoes (him, always with the "Have ye seen my shoes?") are just inside the back door.
I remember one of Roseanne's earliest stand-up bits was about how men think women's uteruses are homing devices, and I suspect mine may actually be one, as my body has adjusted, much as it would to a catastrophic injury, to being married to someone who not only can't find things, but can't remember where he puts things, and never puts anything in the same place twice, even if it has a natural, logical home. Why put the meat scissors in the knife block when you can put them on the desk in the office, or the toolbox, or just leave them on the dining room table after using them to trim an errant thread off your trousers?
If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. Fates save me, I actually find his absent-mindedness endearing. It's the being such a dreadful Finder of Things that has the capacity to drive me 'round the bend, as I try to magically divine in what random place he might have left something the last time he used it. I have, after all, found milk in the cupboard and flour in the laundry room cabinet.
Worse yet, he seems patently incapable of finding something even, and perhaps especially, when it is directly in front of his face.
"Where is the ketchup?" he implores, stooped and hovering in front of the open refrigerator door. I peer over his shoulder and tell him it's there, right there, on the top shelf, center, right under your bleedin' nose. He laughs sheepishly and grabs it. "Ooh! Thanks, babe."
Where is the remoote? Where is my wallet? Have you seen the case foor this DVD? Right in front of you. Ooh! Thanks, babe.
Sometimes I marvel at the sheer implausibility of it. I ask him how it's possible that the unconcealed visibility of something inevitably informs in direct proportion his inability to see it. It's evolution, he tells me with a cheeky grin, just to wind me up. "Men were built tae be hoonters. The soorvivial oof the species was dependent oon my having superior peripheral vision, soo I coould detect the beasties I was hoontin', even little boonies and that."
"Yes," I reply dryly. "I can see the obvious evolutionary value in being able to detect a teensy wee rabbit off to your side but fail to notice a giant moose in front of your face."
"Noo you're beginning tae oonderstand the delicate coomplexities oof manhood, wooman," he tells me, and as my eyes begin to roll, he can do nothing, then, but laugh.
Last night, he couldn't find who-remembers-what-now, and I had occasion to note, once again, that it was right in front of him. "Ooh! Thanks, babe."
"I swear sometimes I worry that if my life depended on your phoning 911, I'd die for wont of your being able to locate the phone," I say.
"Why woould I need tae call nine-woon-woon?" he asks.
"I don't know. Like, say I fell down the stairs and broke my neck or something."
"Ye'd be deed as soon as yoor neck brooke," he tells me matter-of-factly.
"Not everyone who breaks their neck dies!" I exclaim.
"Moost," he says.
"Wev!" I sigh exasperatedly. "The point is that I worry you won't be able to find the bloody phone."
"I will!" he protests. "I'm great in a crisis. Quick thinkin' oonder pressure."
"You are," I say. "But finding things is a different story."
"I'm good at findin' things!" he says, despite the impetus for this entire conversation being that he is, in fact, patently not.
"No you're not," I laugh.
He grins. "I am soo!"
"No, you're really, really not," I laugh.
"Boollshit," he sniffs, putting a serious look on. "I can always find impoortant things."
"Oh, really?"
"Aye. I foond yoo. And ye weren't easy tae find! Foour toosand miles away and that! But I foond ye, didn't I?" He grabs my hand and kisses it.
I laugh shake my head at him. "You think you're pretty cute, don't you?"
"That were a good'un, weren't it?"
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